IF any neighbour, glancing out of their bedroom window the other night, spotted me face down under a bush whispering a woman's name that wasn't my wife's, I'd like to swiftly reassure them.

I wasn't up to anything untoward with a lady by the name of Dora.

I wasn't even drunk.

I was looking for our youngest cat.

Dora, despite being about half the size of the Artist Formerly Known as Prince's left buttock, is a confident creature who caused a mighty exercise that proved that size does not matter.

This month she went missing. And you only have to think of the atom bomb to realise the enormous consequences that something very small indeed can trigger.

Dora, a home-lover but with a treacherous curiosity, failed to return home for two nights and created an impact on other's lives reminiscent of President Bush.

Posters, notes through letterboxes, personal appeals and, of course, an Echo advert led to a red alert in our part of Parkstone.

Sheds and garages were dutifully searched, vets and the Cats Protection League notified, work on a building site stopped for a scour around and the local fox was at the receiving end of some particularly mean glances.

My wife led the tearful hunt that proved to be a heart-warming display in neighbourliness and we would like to thank everyone from our road and those nearby who went to enormous trouble to look for her.

We even recruited, at 10pm, a nice nurse from up the road whom we hadn't met before.

The searchers included dog walkers, passing college students and some unfortunate people at the bus stop, collared like sitting ducks.

Even my daughter and her fiance's wedding planner asked for a description of Dora. (Well, you never know what the cat might have been up to.) And a very, very, very, nice lady from the AA got involved after one neighbour mentioned that a repairman had been seen by a broken down car nearby on the day Dora disappeared.

And what did I do in the hunt?

I have always regarded myself as a St Francis type and had high hopes. After all, I once rescued a cat, that was besotted with me ever after, from a tree.

And a goat I encountered on a Highland break found me so irresistible it tried to seduce me.

I spurned its advances but it left me, for the rest of the holiday, carrying around a smell reminiscent of the uncured Afghan jacket I had taken to the first 1970 Isle of Wight festival with a forgotten soft cheese from Calais in its pocket.

I thought I could be the hero.

When she didn't return for the second night I was out there at 3am tenderly calling "Dora" under garage doors and over garden walls.

And when I heard a rustle under some garden shrubbery I looked but couldn't see anything.

So I did what had to be done. I crawled in, calling the cat's name softly, so as not to wake the neighbours.

Dora, of course, wasn't there.

For the record, young Dora marched home, rather cockily I thought, 52 hours after going missing like some binge-drinking teenage clubber, smelling faintly of paint and without so much as a word of apology or explanation. And we were too relieved to ask questions (though Harold, our eldest cat, gave her a sound ticking off, I'm pleased to say.) But, as I said, if any neighbour spotted my rump under that bush at 3am and heard me softly calling "Dora", that's my excuse.

I only hope Ms Bryan has one as good.